January 2014

Visitor-Created Work

As part of some research for a recent project here at ALCHEMY studio, we have become especially interested in exhibits that encourage visitors’ artistic expression and then invite visitors to share and document these expressions or creations in a meaningful way.

A very interesting example of this is the piece “Your Line or Mine,” created by the firm Moniker for the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

 

 

 

 

 

What we see as strong elements of this piece include the simplicity and the low threshold for visitors to actually engage in the creative work. In addition, it’s not just a blank piece of paper. The creative opportunity has some definition, thus providing a “skeleton” to spark and structure one’s creativity. Sometimes a blank piece of paper can be intimidating and confusing, while a “seed” or “scaffold” can get the process flowing.

Technologically, it’s very easy, simple, and straightforward to insert one’s part of the animation into the collective public-sourced piece.

Finally, what is incredibly powerful is that the collective piece is as much the focus of the experience as is the act of adding one’s creative addition to the animation.

We believe this experience has some important lessons as we all explore experiences where the raison d’être is crowd-sourced, visitor-created content rather than experiences created by museum staff or curators.

We are excited to adapt some aspects of this experience to subjects other than animation.

How does the experience inspire you? We look forward to hearing your thoughts about other experiences that reflect important points about visitor-generated pieces.

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Celebrating experience developers and designers

Here at ALCHEMY studio, if you receive our weekly inspiration, you know what we like to share projects, technologies and experiences that have recently caught our attention. We share these because, for us, they are illustrative of important experience development and design points or emerging trends that we feel are relevant for our field. Additionally, we feel we expose more people to some of the great work going on all around us.

This week, we thought we would share a little animation/video that celebrates the creative ideas and energy of everyone who works in experience development and design. Also, after dealing with a foot of snow and artic temperatures, a little fun was needed here in the studio. So, for all of our brothers and sisters in museum and science center experience design, please enjoy:  This is the work of Elias Freiberger

 

 

 

Let us know if you enjoyed this, and please share other celebrations of creative people and processes.

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Your world upside down

Ames Rooms” are found in many children’s museums and science centers. These spaces are physically distorted to create an optical illusion that makes people appear as giants on one side of the room or incredibly small on the other side of the room.

Well, while not an optical illusion but certainly as much fun, this tourist attraction at the VVT’s All-Russia Exhibition Center in Moscow piqued our interest and made us smile.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The experience is powerful and fun – and totally changes your perspective. Literally turning your world upside down is a great way to get people to observe and think differently.

As one begins to develop and design an exhibition, a strong design and development step is to do what this house does: take the subject and turn it on its head.

This way of thinking could suggest new and innovative ways to explore and present any subject.

Have you seen other “upside-down” worlds? What kinds of experiences have turned your world on its head?

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Exhibit Trends – ASTC Dimensions Exhibition Issue

 

A special note is that this month’s ASTC’s Dimensions focuses on exhibits with insightful articles from across the industry. You can access the newsletter here if you are an ASTC member. Of particular note, Wayne LaBar Principal of ALCHEMY studio, wrote the lead article, which explores trends for future exhibits. Click here to see a pdf of the article.

 

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immersive color and sound

To start our new year, we became enthralled over the holidays with the latest installation by Team Lab called Distilling Senses: A Journey through Art and Technology in Asian Contemporary Art located at the Hong Kong Arts Centre.

 

 

 

In this world of giant orbs, the visitor’s touch changes the color, but the color also changes when the orbs run into something or are affected by the behavior of other spheres around it. Watching the video, the experience appears to be truly mesmerizing.

While a cynical person might describe this as just an over-scaled techno ball room, the experience creators wanted it to communicate how the web allows for interconnectivity and information dissemination. At the same time, a space like this could provide an experiential opportunity to engage with subjects where scale or location would make it impossible to visit.

What is certainly clear is how different and how totally inviting this experience is. It’s a great example of how both scale and immersiveness create a space that draws you in more than any “literal” interpretation of the internet. While, admittedly, it is not very interpretive, it could couple with more interpretive experiences and allow museums to be more impactful.

Over the holidays, did you run across anything mesmerizing?

 

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